1. Field of the Invention
The present invention relates to a video disc and video disc player and, more particularly, to a video disc having an aspect ratio information and video-disc player having a function of converting aspect ratio.
2. Description of the Related Art
An HD video signal in the HDTV (High Definition TeleVision) system is recorded onto a recording medium such as an optical type video disc or the like and is reproduced therefrom. As literatures regarding such a recording/reproducing method, there are Japanese Patent Kokai Nos. 63-245082, 1-280980, and the like. It is desirable that the HD video signal reproduced by the above method is displayed as an image by a monitor such as a CRT or the like having an aspect ratio (the ratio of the frame width to the fame height in display) of 16:9 corresponding to the HDTV system. The monitors having the aspect ratio of 16:9 are nowadays being widespread and the HD video signal cannot cope with the case where the user intends to display the image by a monitor having an aspect ratio of 4:3 corresponding to the existing NTSC system.
Such an HDTV monitor cannot also cope with the case where the recording signal is reproduced from a video disc to record the existing NTSC video signal and its image is displayed by the monitor having the aspect ratio of 16:9.
The present invention is made in consideration of the above problems and it is an object of the invention to provide a video disc and a video disc player which can reproduce respective video signals in correspondence to monitors having different aspect ratios such as monitors corresponding to the NTSC system and HDTV system.
According to one aspect of the present invention, there is provided a video disc on which image information has digitally been recorded by a predetermined format having data blocks to enclose at least image data in a program area, wherein the video disc is characterized by having an ID (identification) signal indicative of an aspect ratio of the image information.
According to another aspect of the present invention, there is provided an information recording method of a video disc, whereby image information is recorded by a predetermined format having a data block to enclose at least image data in a program area of the video disc, wherein the recording method is characterized in that an ID signal indicative of an aspect ratio of the image information is held in the video disc.
A video disc player of a further aspect of the present invention comprises: reproducing means for reproducing image information recorded on the above-mentioned video disc; detecting means for detecting an ID signal held in the video disc; designating means for designating an aspect ratio of image information to be generated; and image information processing means for converting the image information reproduced by the reproducing means into the image information of the aspect ratio designated by the designating means only in the case where the ID signal detected by the detecting means differs from the aspect ratio designated by the designating means, and for producing an image signal having a predetermined format for system on the basis of the converted image information.
According to the video disc of the invention, the recorded ID signal indicates the aspect ratio of the image information.
According to the information recording method of the video disc of the invention, in addition to the image information which is recorded onto the video disc, its aspect ratio information is also held in the video disc.
According to the video disc player of the invention, the ID signal indicative of the aspect ratio is detected from the video disc and, only in the case where the aspect ratio indicated by the detected ID signal differs from the designated aspect ratio, the reproduced image information is converted into the image information of the designated aspect ratio.